Vice Minister of Education: when Twitter asks you to resign, whose fault is it?

By Sonia Yanez Blum (Twitter: @soniayanezblum)

The lady at the door is no longer on Twitter. Her user @aleccardenas does not appear and with her goes a great log of memories and moments that made her -during the pandemic- give us updated information on how to protect ourselves from the coronavirus when Ecuador did not take it seriously. Yes, because although many remember the incident of removing the door of her children’s room, that’s why I nickname her. I remember her for publishing in real time how she lived the pandemic when she lived in China. A time when many of us asked about how they did shopping, disinfection, etc. Twitter is black and white. Now is the black time.

Former Vice Minister Alexandra Cárdenas had a large number of followers on Twitter, more than 30,000. She had a frontal and radical style.

If you didn’t agree with her, you didn’t follow her; but she many times she said things that netizens consider were what they needed to read. So say the messages.

We could say that she was a digital opinion leader, who from her role as a citizen had or felt the freedom to express her opinion freely. Many followed her, she generated discussions, opinions for or against.

The big problem came when she took office as Vice Minister of Education, on September 9, and in just 19 days the digital lynching, the publication of old photos and leaks of previous comments, struggled to attribute actions that should not be seen in an authority.

The memory of the CSI tweeters did not wait, and in a week so convulsed by the mismanagement of the Government’s communication, media scrutiny arose against it. Organized attacks, paid tweets, that always exists, unfortunately, in the world of Twitter. But if the owner of the account has made those comments, that is the great tsunami.

There is no worse crisis than the one unleashed by your own language or by your tweets.

Timeline

Comments on Facebook 2016 for controversy with his son.

Controversial tweets 2018 -2021 (his RT to a publication that attacked the mother of María Belén Bernal was criticized a week ago).

Inaugurated on September 9, 2022.

He deleted his Twitter account on Tuesday, September 27, 2022.

September 28 resigns from office.

Talking about ‘eggs’ in politics and digital image

Twitter as a battlefield

A senior position is not a bulletproof vest in the face of digital scrutiny. It becomes a showcase of your current thoughts and those of many years ago. Unfortunately, a word, a subject dealt with on a personal level when you are a public official, acquires another connotation.

If you accept public office, are you aware of what is involved? Many don’t.

Journalists, lawyers and politicians have in their account biographies: this is my personal account and does not represent where I work. MISTAKE.

If you post photos, reels or people link you to the workplace, that separation of characters is null. And if you don’t publish them, too.

I always tell my students and people who ask me about this topic that many consider superficial: do not underestimate your digital footprint.

The hordes of digital warriors from opposing political tendencies, fake accounts, fanatics, investigative journalism, or citizen journalism who also scrutinize every step.

A single tweet is enough to put you in the eye of the hurricane.

In other countries it had already happened. With CEOs who have to resign, prime ministers with scandals, etc.

Why don’t public figures learn to take care of their digital footprint?

They underestimate the weight of what a trend, real or not, does to a brand, organization or government.

The problem is not the opponents or the false support groups, the weakness lies when the profile and the personal and professional brand is compromised by comments or real publications, because political correctness is a skill that a world of digital judgments cannot give them. avoid.

Who is responsible for this resignation?

First manager who approved your hiring without reviewing your fingerprint. Now you have to be and appear also in digital. It is not a fashion issue. The reputation audit on-line it exists, and it must be applied now that many of the demands of the citizens no longer pass through the press. But directly from their phones.

That it is a topic only for people who see social networks. False.

With this resignation and credibility crisis, we saw that no.

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Is there a way to get out of scrutiny unscathed?

Magic formulas do not exist. But a methodical and planned work.

Make no mistake, the reputation on-line It has several nuances that go from the photographs, your interactions, your posts, RTs and third-party references about you.

That is why here I share with you the aspects that you should watch out for when building your digital footprint to avoid problems.

• Personal brand awareness.
• Intellectual leadership.
• The digital causes you support.
• The relationship and interaction with your digital community.
• The coherence between your proposals and comments and your job position.

These 24 hours of pressure on networks and the media in the face of the digital footprint of an authority provides the opportunity for us to carry out a more in-depth analysis of where digital public opinion is headed, whether it is manipulable and how the authorities can navigate these waters that they seem to be unaware of. .

If you are in politics or are a central figure in a company, your presence on-line and your digital past is not private.

You are under the scrutiny that, as now, makes people in positions of authority who suffered under the straitjacket imposed in the era of reputation disappear from the digital sphere. on-line and hypervisibility.

That is the price to pay. (EITHER)